World War II Diaries:The Complete War Report

Season 1

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73 episodes · First aired 2017-02-05

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S1 E61

1944 September

On the Western Front in northern France, General Eisenhower sets up his headquarters in the city of Reims. A great student of history, he is trying to emulate Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who defeated the Romans at Cannae in south eastern Italy, in a battle considered as one of the greatest tactical displays in military history. Hitler has lost all trust in his Commanders and so he exerts very tight control over all military operations. He orders the troops defending the French cities of Dunkirk and Calais to fight to the last man, and repeats this to his men in Holland holding positions on Walcheren Island, strategically located at the mouth of the Scheldt River, the entrance to the deep water Belgian port of Antwerp. Certain officers have tried repeatedly to assassinate Hitler, as part of a conspiracy that now spreads across the nation. Some important German generals have even deserted the front lines.

S1 E62

1944 October

Hitler orders that all women born in 1928, in other words, all 16 year-olds are to be mobilized for the war effort. In Washington, the Dumbarton Oaks conference, which started in August, draws to a close. It had gathered representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the Republic of China. It lays the foundations for the creation of the United Nations, as well as its Security Council, providing its permanent members the right to veto. On the Eastern Front in Europe, four hundred Jews held in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp stage an uprising. Members of a sonderkommando responsible for taking corpses from the gas chambers to the crematoriums desperately attack their guards using explosives stolen from a nearby factory. They manage to destroy one of the crematoriums before SS soldiers kill them all.

S1 E63

1944 November

The Japanese launch the strategy of sending fire balloons over the Pacific Ocean with the hope that they will reach the United States and produce massive wildfires in the West Coast woodlands. The operation will take place over five months, in the course of which more than nine thousand balloons will be sent off. Three hundred of them will reach American territory, producing hardly any damage. In Hungary, the Soviets are approaching the outskirts of Budapest. The Germans hastily transfer more than fifty thousand Jews from the capital to Austria. In the long march, which will last over a week, more than ten thousand of them are killed.

S1 E64

1944 December

Charles De Gaulle travels to Moscow to meet with Josef Stalin. After a number of meetings over several days, they will sign a military alliance against Germany. In the Pacific, today marks the third anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry in the war. The Americans have recovered much of the lost ground, though this has been at the cost of thousands of deaths.

S1 E65

1945 January

Both for Germany and for Japan, the outcome of the year 1944 has been catastrophic. Hitler's secret weapons have not had the desired effect, and they are proving inconsequential in the development of the war. In Washington, the government makes public the casualties suffered in the war up to December 21 1944: 135,323 soldiers have died, 362,824 wounded, 75,844 have disappeared, and 64,148 have been taken prisoner.

S1 E66

1945 February

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, General Alfred Jodl and Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, are still loyal to Hitler. However, Reich Marshal Goring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann, among others, although also maintaining absolute loyalty to the Fuhrer, inspire only contempt in the majority of political and military leaders. On German soil, Soviet forces are less than one hundred kilometers from Berlin, which is a declared a "fortress city". Children, women and old people throw up barricades while the city is plastered with posters proclaiming ""Victory or Siberia." The U.S. First Army captures the town of Remscheid, to the east of Dusseldorf. On the Eastern Front, the forces under the command of Marshal Zhukov that have reached the Oder River, stop to regroup and wipe out the numerous pockets of enemy soldiers still holding out in their rear areas.

S1 E67

1945 March

On the Eastern Front, the Germans fight a cutthroat battle, roused by National Socialist fanaticism and radical anti-communism. The greatest fear of the Wehrmacht soldiers is to fall into the hands of the Red Army. Stalin intends to make the Allies believe that his objective is to take Dresden. However, Marshal Zhukov has orders of taking the German capital and capturing Hitler as soon as possible."

S1 E68

1945 April

Fifty thousand U.S. troops land unopposed along thirteen kilometers of beach of the southwest coast near Hagushi. Casualties are so scarce that the Marines call today the day of love. Hitler has included Vienna in the category of an "especially important defensive zone," which means fighting with all available means until the last man alive. Also, according to the NERO decree, all infrastructures should be destroyed to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Soldiers of the 89th U.S. Infantry Division arrive at Ohrdruf Concentration Camp, one of the sub-camps of Buchenwald. At the entrance they find thousands of corpses stacked one on top of another, each with a bullet in the neck. When he visits, General Eisenhower, is so affected that he sends photographs to Churchill with copies of movies that have been filmed. The British Prime Minister is so horrified that he circulates the material among members of the War Cabinet.

S1 E69

1945 May

In Germany, Hamburg radio announces Hitler's death: “fallen at his command in the Reich Chancery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz becomes the new head of state. In Germany, General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defense Area, surrenders the city and his troops to General Vasily Chuikov. In Czechoslovakia, the Czech resistance stages the Prague uprising. In the course of the day, two thousand barricades are built throughout the city, and the main bridges over the Vltava River are taken over by the insurgents. Field Marshal Ferdinand Scharner, Commander of Army Group Centre, orders the city garrisons to suppress the rebellion. The SS soldiers that are captured by the partisans are hung from lampposts and burned alive.

S1 E70

1945 June

American bombers attack the Japanese city of Osaka. In Germany, the Soviets have carefully studied the remains of Hitler, Eva Braun, and Joseph Goebbels, who have been buried temporarily in Rathenow. In March 1970, the then president of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, asks the Politburo to authorize the destruction of the remains of Hitler found buried, beginning in February 21, 1946, in a military base within the Soviet sector of Germany. The destruction of the remains was carried out on April 4, 1970 by means of incineration in the city of Schoenebeck and the ashes thrown into the Biederitz River. There are parts of the jaw and skull fragments of Hitler, stored at the Central Archive of the FSB (Russian National Security Service). At the Vatican, Pope Pius XII, in a radio message, calls on the German people to abandon Nazism and rebuild their country. In the Middle East, French forces vacate Syria and Lebanon, leaving the British in control.

S1 E71

1945 July

In Europe, the power of Stalin and his armies has penetrated into the heart of Europe. American and British troops begin to withdraw from the areas assigned to the Soviets, accompanied by many refugees. For Churchill, who is involved in general elections; the presence of the Soviets is a disaster for humanity. However, he was one of those responsible for having allowed it in the first place. The U.S. Second Armored Division has moved into Berlin to take over the area of the capital which is the responsibility of the American government. U.S. warplanes bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Japanese government sources claim that there are no more than 200,000 people left in the Japanese capital, because the rest have fled to safer areas. They add that about five million civilians have died as a result of the incendiary bombs dropped by the Americans.

S1 E72

1945 August

On the Pacific front, American Secret Services, after intercepting Japanese government messages, are convinced they will not accept unconditional surrender. The Secretary of the Navy, James R. Forrestal, says that, in his opinion, despite the circumstances in which they find themselves, the Japanese are determined to continue the war.

S1 E73

1945 September

The various delegations that will participate in the formal Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri continue to arrive.

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